Despite some interesting tablet hardware in the last times of Android, French manufacturer Archos has not had anything notable to exhibit for quite some time. Possibly this is exactly why the organization is jumping in to the small but growing niche of ultra-secure mobile phones, such as the Blackphone and also the Turing Phone. Archos has partnered with SIKUR (read: Secure), a vendor of encrypted company-focused communications apps, to produce the GranitePhone. It’s open to purchase today for any whopping $850.

Because of the GranitePhone’s Android-derived “Granite OS,” essentially everything around the system is encrypted, the custom homescreen that eschews a standard grid layout for any modified form of the SIKUR inbox. But for the security selling points, the marketing material for that phone includes a surprising insufficient detail. The state website mentions “various authentication layers,” “no backdoors,” and “produced for unique people” (what?), and states the phone’s storage is safely supported within the cloud and could be utilized using their company SIKUR apps.

When the marketing does not sell you, then your specifications certainly will not. The GranitePhone utilizes a Snapdragon 615 processor with 2GB of RAM, a 5-inch, 1080p screen, just 16GB of storage, 16MP rear and 8MP front cameras, along with a somewhat anemic 2700mAh battery. That’s some decidedly mid-range hardware – a likewise-outfitted Android phone usually costs under 1 / 2 of that. The styling is normal of Archos, which would be to say gray plastic and a lot of it. There is no reference to which open-source form of Android was utilized to produce the operating-system (or of support for Google apps). If you feel that’s worth $850, then 1) why? and a pair of) within your budget it on the GranitePhone site.